How The Brain Works: Learn About This Surprising and Important Facts

Copyright (c) 2014 SharpBrains

Every good, safe driver must be familiar with various vehicle fundamentals, such as adding gas to his vehicle, accelerating and braking, reading the speedometer, and more. It is no different with the brain. Improving your mental health and brain fitness begins with a basic awareness of how the brain and the mind work.

For example, imagine that you are discussing an ambitious new project with a client. The situation is difficult, both because the importance of the deal for your career means you are anxious to close it to your advantage, and because the client is being quite condescending. The pressure to succeed and the need to refrain from getting angry make it hard for you to "stay cool" and think straight. This turns out to be a good illustration of the ways that we depend on "emotional self-regulation," and demonstrates the fact that emotional and cognitive functions are tightly interconnected.

The human brain evolved to help us operate in complex, changing environments by continually learning and adapting. Successfully doing so involves a variety of brain functions and abilities, including various types of memory, language, emotional regulation, attention and planning.

And the good news is that brain functions are not fixed at birth or after childhood, as our brains constantly change over a lifetime: over the short term in response to our daily thoughts, sensations, feelings, and actions, as well as over the long term, as we continue growing wiser -- and older. The good news is that we are not relegated to passively watching these changes occur. Our brains respond to basic lifestyle factors that we have a large degree of control over, and neuroplasticity (the brain's lifelong capacity to change and rewire itself in response to stimulation and experience) is at the core of the ability to actively improve specific functions through training. Genetics is not destiny.

In particular, it is important to keep in mind these four essential, yet often overlooked, facts:

1) "Smart pills" simply don't exist. It would be nice, of course, if we could all just take a pill to quickly and painlessly increase brain health and performance. But high quality research challenges the real value and safety of "brain supplements" for memory improvement. Now, while evidence that "smart" drugs actually work is scarce at the present, we do have a wide-ranging body of research to support the idea that a few fundamental behaviors have a significant influence on our brain health and fitness, and these include physical and mental exercise and a healthy diet. So why don't we start there?

2) Aging can bring decline... Starting in our late 20s and early 30s, research shows that speed of processing and working memory (the type of memory that allows us to both hold information in mind and work on it as needed) tend, on average, to slow down, reducing our capacity to process and deal with complex new information. This is a gradual process that often first becomes noticeable in our early 40s. However, individuals vary significantly in how and when they experience these decreases: some people experience a significant decline while others do not.

3) ... and also improvement. At the same time, even after the brain is fully developed, scientists have found that a range of abilities that benefit from accumulated experience, such as vocabulary, pattern recognition, and self-regulation, tend to get better year after year. In one study for example, researchers asked individuals from three age groups to read stories about intergroup and interpersonal conflicts and predict how these conflicts would unfold. Compared to young and middle-aged people, older people employed higher reasoning schemes that involved multiple perspectives, allowed for compromise, and recognized the limits of knowledge. So, the point is, we need both to nurture our strengths and to address our weaknesses, if we are to maintain peak performance along extended life and career spans.

4) "Cells that fire together wire together." By practicing a skill over and over we stimulate the same neural networks in the brain, resulting in the strengthening of existing connections and the creation of new ones. As we get older, our brains can work even better, requiring less effort to perform the same activities, which is why brain training methids can work if properly designed. This is also true with education and lifelong learning. By increasing the connections between brain cells and increasing the so-called brain reserve, learning helps protect the brain against age-related decline and against symptoms, such as memory lapses, due to dementia pathology. Education is a lifelong endeavor, rather than one that largely concludes when we finish school.

In short, our brains and minds are far from set in stone due to genetics or age. Growing evidence suggests beyond a reasonable doubt that what we do at every single day has an impact on brain fitness that very same day and also later in life. For example, how many brain teasers have you done today? They can make a difference! Education, lifestyle, brain training and decisions under our control matter as much as our genetic inheritance in the trajectory of our mental capacity over time, a realization that can be somewhat daunting but also immensely empowering. By reading this article, you have just now physically changed your brain's neural connections and taken a step towards a healthier and fitter brain. What will your next step be?